Design and implement university prep curriculum in grammar, composition, conversation, and reading comprehension courses for international students seeking undergraduate and graduate admission

Build and teach literature/creative writing hybrid courses to undergraduate students of various concentrations for elective credit with the Honors College

Course Title: “Sports & Social Change: Leveraging Attention into Action”School: UMB Honors CollegeSemesters taught: Fall 2019 (forthcoming)Description: In this course, we will examine past and contemporary examples of how sports can be leveraged to make a positive social impact. Together, students will brainstorm, outline, and implement their own community-based projects to address a particular social imbalance during the course of the semester.

Course Title: “The Language of Illness” School: UMB Honors College and College of Advancement and Professional Studies (CAPS)Semesters taught: Fall 2015, Summer 2016, Fall 2017, Fall 2018Description: From recent YA-sensation The Fault in Our Stars to the many hit TV medical dramas, there is something about illness that connects deeply and innately in our experience. Perhaps it is when we are most vulnerable that language becomes most vital. And at the same time: most difficult to express. In this course, we ask: What is the language of illness? What “undiscovered countries” can we explore from our own encounters with illness: personal, professional, or intellectual?

Course Title: “The Art of Storytelling“School: UMB Honors CollegeSemesters taught: Fall 2016, Fall 2018Description: Whether seated around ancestral fires or streaming podcasts through earbuds, humankind has an innate thirst for stories that can express who we are and imagine who we might become. This course explores the craft and function of storytelling as a tool for individual and social empowerment. Students study cultural perspectives on storytelling while writing, adapting, and performing their own stories focused around identity and community. At the culmination of the semester, the class produces an original storytelling event at UMass Boston aimed at fostering conversation and community on campus.

Course Title: “English Sounds and Storytelling”School: CAPS English As a Second Language (ESL) at UMass BostonSemesters: Fall 2017 – presentDescription: In this class, we build fluency and confidence in our speaking and listening skills. Students learn about story structure and practice telling stories throughout the semester. We will listen to, read, write, record, and perform our stories in class every week. Lessons teach pronunciation, intonation, presentation, and listening strategies. Exercises give students fun, thought-provoking ways to share language.

Course Title: “City of Boston: Language and Identity”School: CAPS ESL at UMass BostonSemesters: Fall 2016 – Fall 2018Description: What is the relationship between language and identity? Which words do we use to define ourselves as individuals or communities? In this course, we read contemporary essays by Bostonians and international authors reflecting on the city and their place in it. Students compose their own essays during the semester to explore place and their relationship to it.

Course Title: “An American Road Trip”School: CAPS ESL at UMass BostonSemesters: Fall 2016 – Spring 2017Description: Since its inception, America has built mythology around the road as a pathway to expansion, discovery, individualism, and conquest. From the first pilgrims to explorers Lewis and Clark; from Henry Ford’s Model-T automobile to the modern American road trip inspired by Beat poets (or Brittany Spears); the open road has deep connections to how Americans view themselves. In this class, we seek to understand how American culture has been shaped—for better and for worse—by its great roads.

Course Title: “Learning Language through New Media”School: CAPS ESL at UMass BostonSemesters: Fall 2014 – Spring 2016Description: In this course, we collaborate as student journalists to design, write, edit, and share a blog for international students in Boston. Students practice language skills while learning new media technology and its terminology in English. Students also learn basic principles of journalism and debate media ethics.

Course Title: “Beginning ESL through Art and Music”School: CAPS ESL at UMass BostonSemesters: Summer 2015, Summer 2018Description: In this class, we use the five senses to discover vocabulary while enjoying cross-cultural encounters with art and music. Students visit local museums and engage in their own art- or music-making while building vocabulary and camaraderie in the classroom.

Course Title: “A Home in Language”School: CAPS ESL at UMass BostonSemesters: Fall 2013 – Spring 2015Description: What creates the feeling of “home”? Can a foreign language come to feel familiar? In this class, creative exercise and group work help us find new language and perspectives. Perhaps even to feel at-home away from home in Boston.

Course Title: “Intro to Creative Writing”School: English DepartmentSemesters: Fall 2012Description: What makes a story or a poem meaningful to you? This question is at the heart of our course, and we'll plot our course in search of its answer. In this course, we seek to understand our own unique ways of looking at the world, and how to give them artistic expression.

Academic Service2017-present Faculty Advisor to Write on the DOT2016-17 Started ESL Teachers Workshop to enhance group feeling and offer curriculum support among staff.2014-16 Filmed annual Fun>Fear Halloween music video series with international students2015 Created ESL library to make leveled English language reading materials accessible to students.2010-12 Hispanic Writers Week assistant at UMass Boston

PublicationsAuthor“Blizzard Poem,” Window Cat Press, 2018 and forthcoming in Welcome to the Neighborhood: An Anthology of American Coexistence, Ohio University Press (Dec. 2019)“After the Minneapolis Miracle: Have Vikings Fans Truly Won?” The Good Men Project, 2018“Witness,” Story Showcase: Live at the Podcast Garage, 2017“Are You My Uber?” McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, 2016“Hank vs. Henry: Howard Bryant’s The Last Hero,” The Good Men Project, 2014“Dakota Falls and Other Stories,” UMass Boston MFA Thesis, 2013“Interview with Adam Haslett,” The Breakwater Review, 2011“Homerun Sports Stories,” Don’t Forget to Write: A Collection of Creative Writing from 826Boston, 2011“In Webster’s,” Flashquake.com and The Inman Review, 2010Wonder/Wander: 522 Days in Latin America, Self-published, 2009